PLANNING 273 



the job of bringing the resources of this region to their greatest 

 usefulness. The plan has five parts: (1) navigation and flood 

 control, (2) electricity, (3) plant foods and soil conservation, 

 (4) national defense, (5) development of Tennessee Valley 

 resources. 



The Tennessee Valley Authority grew out of a program for 

 national defense. Without a question, national defense is the 

 work of the federal government. In this particular case, national 

 defense was to be served by making nitrates for ammunition. 

 To produce the nitrates, electric furnaces were needed. To 

 produce electricity, water-power dams were built. 



For a long time after the World War, the federal interest in 

 the Tennessee Valley was nothing more than an unused nitrate 

 plant. Then with the growth of what we have described as a 

 second phase of the conservation of our national resources, the 

 Tennessee Valley got a new use. The basis of this use was the 

 production of electric power. The federal government does not, 

 by the Constitution, have the right to set up a power-plant for 

 the single purpose of producing power. It does, however, have 

 the right to insure the navigability of streams. To control 

 navigation of a stream like the Tennessee River, the level of 

 the water in the channel must be fairly constant. As everyone 

 knows, in most rivers, there is high water in spring and low 

 water during the summer. If you want to have a constant 

 supply of water, you have to build dams to hold back the spring 

 floods and then release this flood water during the summer. 



Water released from the flood dams can produce electric 

 power, and the government saw no reason why power should 

 not be produced by the Tennessee Valley flood dams. 



There is one difference between a dam built particularly for 

 flood control and a dam built for the single purpose of produc 

 ing electricity. A flood-control dam should be empty as much of 

 the time as possible so that there will be plenty of room for the 

 coming flood waters. Electric power dams, on the other hand, 



